(a) He (usually male) is very fearful of rejection by women and he desires a sexual partner who is incapable of rejecting him

2. He develops an exciting fantasy of sex with a computer, sometimes after prolonged exposure to a computer.

The authors also reported that, of their sample of 'compuphiliacs,' 68 percent were motivated by a desire for an unresisting and unrejecting partner; 21 percent by a want for union with machinery; 15 percent by sexual attraction to computers; 15 percent by a desire for comfort or to overcome feelings of isolation; and 12 percent by a desire to remedy low self-esteem by expressing power over a computer (pp. 159).

Although obtaining consent is not usually considered a prerequisite for activity with non-living material, compuphilia is considered to be taboo and frequently labelled as abuse.